Radio Lear

About Radio Lear

Welcome to Radio Lear, a captivating exploration of sound and thought that transcends conventional boundaries. In our unique way we invite you to embark on a unique journey curated by Max Sturm, a visionary artist and Creative Director. Discover the transformative power of sound as it intertwines with the principles of metamodernism, bridging the realms of art, technology, and human expression.

Publisher

Radio Lear

Category

arts · arts · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

27 Sept 2023

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

107 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Sound Assembly – Improvised Sound from the Bede Street Arches

   Sound Assembly returns to Radio Lear at 8pm on Friday 9th October 2026 with a recording made during the session held at the Bede Street Arches in Leicester on Wednesday 30th September. The broadcast consists of two improvised sound assemblies, each lasting between twenty and twenty-five minutes. There was no central direction, score or curator deciding what should happen. Instead, the participants worked with what was available: physical objects, electronic devices, voices, fragments of sound and the particular acoustic character of the room itself. Discovering Sound Through Improvisation Sound Assembly begins from a simple proposition. What happens when people gather in a space and listen to what can emerge without first deciding what the result should be? The recordings retain this openness. They are not edited into conventional compositions, and the conversations and exchanges between participants remain part of the material. Moments of discussion sit alongside periods of concentration, hesitation, repetition and unexpected conjunction. The boundaries between preparing a sound, making a sound, listening to somebody else and talking about what has just happened become deliberately uncertain. What emerges is less a performance than a shared exploration of sound, attention and the possibilities of the moment. The Acoustic Character of the Arches The Bede Street Arches are important to this process. The room has its own acoustic presence. Sounds travel across the space, reflect from its surfaces and become entangled with one another. Sometimes an individual object seems to come sharply into focus; at other moments it becomes difficult to say where one sound ends and another begins. The objects and devices used during the session similarly move between familiar and unfamiliar roles. An everyday item can cease to be something primarily useful and become something to strike, scrape, shake, resonate or listen to. Electronic sounds enter alongside these physical textures, creating brief relationships that were neither planned nor necessarily repeatable. Across the two recordings there are consequently a series of interspersed moments of reflection. Some are dense and active, while others open into quieter spaces. The interest lies less in reaching a finished musical statement than in noticing what happens when attention is shared between people, objects, technologies and the room itself. Listening Without a Predetermined Outcome This is one of the principles behind Sound Assembly. It is a place for listening as much as making; for discovering rather than demonstrating; and for treating sound as something that can be explored collectively without needing to arrive with a completed piece or a predetermined idea of what should happen. Without a central organising authority, participants are free to respond to one another, introduce new sounds or allow existing ones to develop. This creates a form of collective improvisation in which the relationships between sounds are as important as the sounds themselves. There is also something valuable in leaving the conversations and exchanges within the recording. These are not interruptions to an otherwise complete work, but part of the shared experience through which the assembly takes shape. The process of listening, responding and reflecting becomes audible alongside the objects and instruments being explored. From the Arches to the Radio Radio can extend that experiment further. Once the recording leaves the room in which it was made, another listening space begins. The particular acoustic of the arches becomes translated through transmitters, radios, loudspeakers and headphones, arriving somewhere else in Leicester, Loughborough or across the East Midlands. Something that was temporary, situated and dependent on a particular gathering becomes available to other listeners. The recording does not reproduce the original experience exactly, but creates another opportunity to attend to the relationships between the sounds and to discover moments that might have passed unnoticed during the session itself. For Radio Lear, this is an important part of exploring radio as an artistic medium. Broadcasting is not simply a means of distributing finished cultural products, but an opportunity to experiment with forms of collective expression, listening and shared imagination. Listen to Sound Assembly on Radio Lear Sound Assembly broadcasts at 8pm on Friday 9th October 2026 on Radio Lear, available on DAB+ in Leicester, Loughborough and across parts of the wider East Midlands. The programme features both improvised recordings from the Wednesday 30th September session at the Bede Street Arches, retaining the discussions, exchanges and unexpected acoustic encounters that formed part of the gathering. A podcast version will follow the broadcast, allowing listeners to return to the two sessions and experience the recordings in their complete form. For now, the invitation is simply to listen: to the objects, the electronics, the voices, the room, and to the accidental relationships that emerged between them. Radio Lear – Leicester Emergent Arts Radio (https://radiolear.uk) “`

2. 

   17 Sept 2026

   Sound Beneath the Arches – The First Radio Lear Sound Assembly Recording

   An archway holds a space open. People can pass through it, pause beneath it, or gather within its shelter. On Wednesday 16th September 2026, the Braunstone Gate arches became a place for gathering through sound, as Radio Lear’s Sound Assembly brought together a live mix of electronic performance and shared contributions. Paul Conneally (https://www.instagram.com/paul_conneally/) performed using a mobile version of GarageBand, incorporating a loop from Miffy Ryan (https://www.instagram.com/miffyryan/). Sound contributions from Traci Howard (https://www.instagram.com/traci_howard/), John Coster (https://www.instagram.com/docmediacentre/) and Rob Watson (https://www.instagram.com/robwmedia/) filled the archway space, bringing several people’s creative impulses into a shared setting. This is the first recording to emerge from the Sound Assembly sessions, with others to follow. It will be broadcast in its unedited form on Radio Lear at 9pm on Friday 18th September 2026, with a podcast available after the broadcast. There is something fitting about beginning this series beneath an arch. A threshold is a place of possibility: somewhere between arrival and departure, between the familiar uses of a space and whatever we might discover there together. Sound Assembly opens that threshold to listening. The tools can be portable and everyday. A mobile device running GarageBand becomes an instrument for live performance. A loop supplied by another artist becomes material that can be carried into a new situation. Each contribution enters a space already occupied by other people, other sounds and the possibilities of an encounter. Authorship becomes a conversation. Paul’s performance, Miffy’s loop and the contributions from Traci, John and Rob belong to the account of how this recording came into being. Together, they suggest a way of making in which an individual gesture can become part of something that no single participant fully possesses. For Radio Lear, this is an important part of what an emergent arts practice can offer. A session creates an opportunity to find out what happens when people bring their attention and imagination into a shared space. Its value includes the act of listening to what someone else has introduced, and allowing that contribution to change the possibilities of our own. The philosophical writing of Arthur Schopenhauer offers one way of thinking about this attention. He understood aesthetic experience as a temporary release from the restless demands of wanting, pursuing and achieving. In encounters with art, we can become absorbed in something beyond our immediate concerns. Music occupied a particular place in his thinking because of its capacity to express something fundamental without first having to describe an object or tell a story. Sound can move us before we have found words for what it means. Sound Assembly invites a modest, practical exploration of that possibility. What happens when we give sound time to occupy our attention? What becomes available when we loosen our grip on the need to reach an immediate conclusion? These questions do not require everyone to share a philosophical outlook. They can remain open within the experience itself. One listener may attend to texture, another to repetition, another to the relationship between a sound and the space around it. Meaning can take shape differently for each person. Broadcasting the recording unedited preserves the session’s unfolding duration. It gives listeners the opportunity to encounter the live mix as a continuous process, following its development rather than hearing a selection of excerpts. The invitation is to spend time with a first recording from a practice that is still taking shape. Radio extends that gathering beyond the arches. A sound made in one place travels into another: a kitchen, a bedroom, a pair of headphones, the quiet of a Friday evening. The circumstances of listening change, and the work acquires another setting in which to be heard. This first Sound Assembly recording marks the beginning of that journey. Further recordings will follow as the sessions develop and more contributions find their place. Listen to the unedited live mix on Radio Lear at 9pm on Friday 18th September 2026. A podcast will follow after the broadcast.

3. 

   27 Aug 2026

   What Comes Back – The Space Between Passing and Beginning

   There is a moment when a tree lets go of a leaf. From where we stand, it looks like an ending. Yet beneath the surface, the next season is already being prepared. In this episode of Headspace from Radio Lear, the music asks a simple question: what becomes possible when we recognise that passing and beginning belong to the same cycle? This is not an invitation to pretend that every change is welcome. It is a chance to listen to the space between holding on and moving forward: the interval in which one form has loosened, while another has not yet fully appeared. What Can Be Gained When Something Passes? We often speak as though holding on is strength and letting go is defeat. We welcome the promise of a new beginning, but resist the disturbance that makes it possible. Growth, however, rarely arrives on an empty stage. It emerges through what has weathered, altered, completed its part, or made room for something else. That does not mean everything that disappears is neatly replaced. A cycle is not a guarantee that what passes will return in the same form. The branch remains bare for a while. The ground can look still. Some changes leave questions that cannot be quickly resolved. Yet stillness is not necessarily the absence of movement. Old material can become nourishment. An emptied space changes what can enter it. Even repetition is transformed by time: the person, place, or idea that returns has travelled. The tension, then, is not simply between loss and gain. It is between two movements that may need one another: releasing what cannot remain and becoming available to what has not yet taken shape. How the Music Moves The programme opens with slow ascent. Weight and lift are present together. In Brian Eno’s An Ending (Ascent), completion seems to contain its own horizon. The ending does not simply fall away; it opens into space. The sequence then becomes more physical. Bryan Senti’s Malecón suggests an edge where fixed ground meets moving water. Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion’s A Gradual Dazzle builds through soft percussion, interlocking chords, and repeated beginnings. In her notes for the album (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/shaw-let-the-soil-play-its-simple-part/1556856822), Shaw describes chords that pivot, rise, interlock, and restart. Renewal here is gradual and collaborative, not a single triumphant flash. Spiraling and Temporal Dryft complicate the idea of straightforward progress. A spiral returns, but never to precisely the same point. Drift may appear directionless, yet it still carries us somewhere. The music allows growth to be curved, patient, and partly unknowable. At the centre, Abandon Window and Or hold the opposites open. To leave a window might mean turning away from one view. It might also mean leaving an opening unguarded. The choice remains alive: departure or invitation, ending or beginning. What Comes Back Is Changed Ryuichi Sakamoto’s immersive version of andata begins the return. Its movement feels travelled rather than possessed. Then Shabason and Krgovich’s What Comes Back makes return itself the question. What comes back may carry memory, but it also arrives altered by time. This is the difference between a circle and a spiral. A circle suggests exact repetition; a spiral revisits familiar ground from another position. The closing tracks, Topaz and Ideas of Light, bring colour and illumination. Light does not erase the shadows that gave it shape. It makes edges, textures, and openings more visible. The sequence reaches brightness without forcing certainty. This matters because beginnings are often described as clean breaks. Lived time is rarely so tidy. An old commitment may continue to teach us after it has ended. A new idea may carry traces of what came before. Rest and growth can occupy the same day. The Space Between Seasons The opposites are not cancelled. They give each other definition. Without change, continuity can become repetition without renewal. Without continuity, change has nothing from which to grow. In a period of transition, we might therefore ask more than, “What am I leaving behind?” We might also ask, “What has this made available?” What room has opened? What knowledge remains? What small beginning is already present, though it has not yet declared itself? There is no need to hurry towards an answer. Like a field between harvest and spring, what appears empty may be gathering the conditions for another form of life. Music in This Episode A Winged Victory for the Sullen – Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears (Mixed) Brian Eno – An Ending (Ascent) (2005 Digital Remaster) Bryan Senti – Malecón Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion – A Gradual Dazzle Christopher Willits – Spiraling Cool Maritime – Temporal Dryft Jon Hopkins – Abandon Window (Remaster 2023) kangding ray – Or Ryuichi Sakamoto – andata (immersion 2023) Shabason & Krgovich, Joseph Shabason & Nicholas Krgovich – What Comes Back Sky H1 – Topaz Sun Rain & Spookyfish – Ideas of Light Headspace is a reflective, music-led podcast from Radio Lear. This episode listens for what is quietly becoming possible in the spaces life is making.

Podcast Authority Score: 45 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

80

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

27

Contact Radio Lear

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.